Bill Maher: 2A About Keeping Black Slaves In Check

Last Friday, on HBO’s Real Time, Bill Maher framed the Second Amendment as composed by the Framers for the purpose of controlling slaves.

Drawing on a Daily Kos write-up of an annotated Constitution produced by The New York Times and available only in print, Maher apparently quoted historian Garry Wills:

Because [Garry Wills] says the Second Amendment “shows just how far the poison of slavery pervaded the Constitution. It was intended to protect slaveholders who used militias to keep a firm grip on their slaves. It wasn’t meant to let individuals prevent federal tyranny. How could it? It was meant to guarantee the legality of well-regulated militias to handle the states’ internal problems, especially the problem of a large slave population.”

Americans broadly applied double standards in their perceptions of mass murderers of varying racial backgrounds, claimed Maher, who also connected Islam to race:

I know it drives Republicans crazy when liberals say everything is about race and everything isn’t about race. But I feel like guns is the one area where, if you can’t see a giant difference between the way black and white are treated in America with guns, I think there’s a little racism in you. I mean, show the Roy Moore video. Here’s a politician waving a gun at a rally. Could you get away with doing that?

There you go. And the Vegas shooter himself, you know, it seems like when the shooter — if he was Muslim, certainly it would have been about, “Let’s — we got to get the ban going.” If he was a Mexican, it would be about the wall. And I feel like, when it’s the white guy, it’s like, “We don’t know how this happened.” But they don’t, you know, we don’t —

I feel like it never gets to be an isolated incident if you’re a minority. They always drag in the, you know, and this guy was from a broken home, his father was a criminal, you know, that would be big on Fox News, I feel like.

Maher’s guest panelists — all left-wing Democrats (MSNBC’s Steve Schmidt and Harold Ford Jr., and New York Magzine‘s Olivia Nuzzi) — all agreed with his broader indictment of American society.

Watch Maher’s comments below.

H/T Brad Wilmouth at NewsBusters.

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.